Wednesday, August 15, 2012

Over a year ago, I got an email from a woman who lived in an Eastern European country. She had seen a recommendation of Life As We Knew It and was interested in reading it. But living where she was, it would have cost a lot of money to have a copy shipped to her. And the book wasn't available for her Kindle, at least not in English.

At that point, I didn't know a lot about Amazon/Kindle, so I contacted my agent to ask why that was. It seems that when we sold the UK rights to the moon books, we hadn't included the ebook rights in the contracts.

We asked the UK publisher if they would like the ebook rights, and they hemmed and hawed and ultimately decided they didn't. Don't ask me why not, because it doesn't make a lot of sense to me, but a no is a no.

So my agent contacted Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and asked them if they would like the ebook English language rights, and they said sure, why not. So we signed contracts. They didn't have to pay me a penny more, but I get a nice royalty rate, which works fine for me.

Now if you're in a country which has Amazon/Kindle available, you can now buy a number of my books in English (the German versions have been available on Kindle from the beginning). All three moon books are there, as well as my older titles that I put up as ebooks (see the right side of the blog for information about them). In addition, Blood Wounds can be bought on Kindle outside of the United States and Canada. Since Blood Wounds hasn't been published outside of the United States/Canada, this is pretty much the only way of reading it without having to pay for shipping.

Here's the Amazon/Kindle listing from Amazon UK.com and Amazon Germany. com and Amazon France. com (notice that the French versions of my books aren't available on Kindle, for reasons I don't understand). Those are the only countries I have listings for. Amazon isn't available every country, and when you google in something like Amazon Brazil, you get a lot of listings for some river or another.

But if you're in a country where you can use a Kindle, and you're interested in reading one or more of my books, you now can, thanks in part to a woman in an Eastern European country who took the time to email me to ask why she couldn't!

Friday, August 10, 2012

But this week has been crazy, partly because of the Olympics, which I love on TV and online (do you know, well of course you don't but you will momentarily, that I even watched the Men's Triple Jump online because the competitor from Haiti is actually from about 20 miles from here).

And if the Olympics weren't enough, my carpet got stretched yesterday (no doubt in training for the Triple Carpet Jump event). I'd been told it would get stretched Wednesday, so I moved all the books and CDs and DVDs and pictures out of the living room Tuesday night, only it didn't get stretched until Thursday, so I spent last night and this morning moving all the books and CDs and DVDs and pictures back into the living room. The carpet definitely looks better, although it remains old and ratty (the disadvantage of renting).

But in the midst of all this chaos, I made a magnificent change to the right side of the blog. See? I added a slideshow of Scooter at his most intellectual. It took me a long long time to figure out how to do it, and I'll never do it again, since I have no idea how I actually got it up there. But it was definitely my accomplishment of the week, and it merited a line in my Friday gratitude diary.

All right. I still have dozens of plastic bags to put away and my mother's laundry (done yesterday) to take out of the drier, before watching track and field online.

Friday, August 3, 2012

But onto the announcement. My editor emailed me yesterday to ask if I wanted The Shade Of The Moon to come out in Fall 2013 or Spring 2014. Fall would require me to finish the rewrites by October, and Spring would give me until January to do same.

I emailed back to say the people who read my blog (i.e. you) are eager to read The Shade Of The Moon and would prefer the Fall date. My editor understood why that was so important to me, and agreed to get to work almost instantly, since I can't do the rewrites until she writes her notes suggesting what needs improvement.

What I didn't tell her was the only chance I have to test my No Complaining Resolution was if I had to do the rewrites almost immediately, since by December, I will undoubtedly have slipped into my whining ways, because I won't have had anything much to complain about between now and then to put my No Complaining Resolution to the test.

Yes, people who read my blog (i.e. you). I used you (i.e. you).

Hmm. This is now an announcement and a confession. Two for the price of zero (thank you, Blogspot*, for this gift of free space).

So The Shade Of The Moon will be published a little over a year from now. Let's see how much complaining I don't do between now and then!

*Blogspot's very own spellcheck doesn't think Blogspot is a word. It offered me as an alternative "Bloodsport." I'll let you come up with the jokes about that while I watch trampoline.

Here's An Article From Publishers Weekly

Let's Not Forget

About Me

I decided to be a writer when I was in first grade and I've been fortunate to have lived my dream.
Among my books are Kid Power, About David, and The Year Without Michael and The Riddle Streak.
My 77th book, Blood Wounds was published in September 2011.
I'm also the author of Life As We Knew It, The Dead And The Gone, and This World We Live In. The fourth book in the series, The Shade Of The Moon, came out August 2013 and is now available in paperback.